The Tinkering Belle

I'm Taryn, a small business owner, busy with life and not enough money to spend on someone else building my website and networking for me. I put this site together to share the knowledge I have learned in many many hours through Google searches, trial and error and advice from other people such as myself.

6.02.2010

I know this sounds like something wrong and encouraged not to be used. But, it's just the name. I haven't been able to find anything stating it's illegal on Etsy. And it doesn't affect your listings, fees or break any rules, it just alters "YOUR ETSY" page.

If you're a seller on Etsy, and especially if you have a lot of listings, these "hacks" are a must! How many times have you viewed one of your listings and realized there was an error. Then, you go back to "YOUR ETSY" and you have to click through the ump-tine amounts of pages to find that listing to click the edit button. Or, how many times have you thought, "Boy, wouldn't it be nice to just copy the listing instead of copying and pasting the same information for a slightly different information.

Well, our prayers were answered!!!! The catch, it's only available for Mozilla Firefox browser users at the moment. You'll also need to install their Greasemonkey add-on from their homepage as well. I was a little hesitant of installing it at first just because my computer has its moods but it actually was very easy and quick.

Once you have your Firefox and you have your Greasemonkey (who thinks of these names anyway?!?!?), click on each of the hacks bulleted on their site. It'll take you to a full information page with screenshots and all about that particular hack. Click on the orange "Install" button at the top of the page, you'll get a pop up screen, click Install when it's ready. You can use a few or all of the hacks. Once you're done installing them all, log into your new and improved Etsy. If you're already in your Etsy, I believe you have to log out and log back in for the changes to take place.

I came across someone talking about their Etsy hacks on twitter a few months ago and I'm so happy I did. I have all of them installed. It makes it so much easier get around Etsy as a seller.

5.02.2010

So, I rented a book from the library about Twitter. I know, I know, how dorky...My husband has already gotten on me about that. I'm kind of a bookworm and it was something I needed to learn anyway, right?

So, this book, "Twitter - Tips, Tricks & Tweets" by Paul McFedries was a very easy read. I do have to say, much easier that spending a couple weeks figuring out the ins and outs of twitter by copying everyone else. I actually learned something from the book that was quite interesting. I didn't know twitter has these useful bots out there.

A twitter bot is an automated twitter account. A person does not run the account and RT and send DMs. Things are done automatically. When you follow a bot, the bot follows you. Here are some useful purposes of a bot...

It's a bot, so it will follow you back automatically. Then, once it follows you, you can send DM to it. If you send the message "10 Call Mom", in 10 minutes, it'll DM you back with the message to Call Mom. This works great if you have alerts coming to your phone. Now, it's not recommended you use this as your way to get up every morning since twitter can be "over capacity" at times and not delivery right on time but it could come in handy.

First, you need to DM them with "twanslate help" and this will give you the directory for the different languages to twanslate. For example, FR is French. Then, you'd DM with "fr I love Twitter" and it will DM you back with the twanslation.

DM it with "city, state" or with "zip" and it will DM you back with the forecast for that area.

These are just a few of the bots that are out there. Just like technology, there is always something new. I would suggest searching "bot" on twitter and see if there is anything out there that would interest you.

4.28.2010

Colors are published to the internet using special codes called Hex codes. The reason for this is so a color can be specified, not by color name such as pink or blue, but to include the shade you prefer. Once you know your hex code(s) for the website and company you're designing, it's easy to coordinate the elements of your website.

The hex code is in the format of a hastag + 6 characters. For example: #ff3366 is a bright shade of pink. #000000 is black.

Photo editing software will allow you to choose this very color as well so you can create all of your images, but...they use a different system. Their codes are in RGB format, two digits for red, two for blue and two for green. The combination of each of those three shades of Red, Blue and Green will create the color you're needing. Now, I know I had a heck of a time coordinating my website at first with the images I was creating...way before I knew about hex codes. My problem was that my editing software defaulted to working in CMYK format instead of RGB. (I'll post another article on this topic later). Just be sure your software is working in RGB format because that is what the internet runs on.

"How do you create your hex code?", you ask. Honestly, I have no idea how to manually create and calculate your own color. With the tools on the internet today, it's very easy to generate your code with the very specific color you're looking for.

Here is a tool online I find very very helpful. First, to generate your own hex color, change the hue to the general color you want by dragging the bar up and down. Then, on the big Brightness/Saturation block, drag the circle around to get the color you want. You can preview the color your building in the color swatch box to the right of that. Those little numbers constantly changing at the bottom? That is your code. They give you the hex code and the RGB codes.

That's not all...take the hex code you created and enter it into the hex code in the next section down (under the color wheel) and click submit. This will give you a color scheme and the hex codes for each of those colors. Don't forget, for your editing software, you're going to need those RGB codes for the corresponding colors. Just take the hex codes from those and plug it into the code generator you were just working in (it works if you type in the hex code and click in the gray area next to it). It will change the color swatch and give you the codes you need. Write these codes down and keep them safe. You may actually use them so often, you'll memorize them.